Kolkata Knight Riders will look to extend its recent run of success when it returns home after securing two emphatic away wins.
KKR hosts Mumbai Indians at the Eden Gardens in Kolkata on May 11. The faceoff against MI assumes more significance as a victory will ensure a play-off spot for the Knight Riders.
The spate of success, highlighted by the fact that the team has won four of its last five outings, puts KKR on top of the league table with 16 points from 11 matches. This also makes it the favourite against the struggling MI, currently lying in the eighth spot (with eight points from 12 matches). MI is out of the race for a spot in the playoffs.
The opening partnership of Sunil Narine and Phil Salt has been a crucial factor in KKR’s consistent performance. Narine’s belligerence with the bat has been a key element in KKR amassing 200-plus totals in six of the eight innings where it has batted first.
Narine, who has scored 461 runs with a strike rate of 183.67, is in exceptional form that has propelled him as the team’s most successful all-rounder. As a bowler, which is his primary vocation, Narine has been outstanding with an economy rate of 6.61.
Salt, having scored 429 runs with a strike rate of 183.33, has proved to be the right companion for Narine. KKR, which beat MI by 24 runs at the Wankhede Stadium, will be banking on its key players to come good again.
Teams
Kolkata Knight Riders: Shreyas Iyer (c), KS Bharat (wk), Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Sherfane Rutherford, Manish Pandey, Andre Russell, Nitish Rana, Venkatesh Iyer, Anukul Roy, Ramandeep Singh, Varun Chakravarthy, Sunil Narine, Vaibhav Arora, Chetan Sakariya, Harshit Rana, Suyash Sharma, Mitchell Starc, Dushmantha Chameera, Sakib Hussain, Mujeeb Ur Rahman, Gus Atkinson, Allah Ghazanfar and Phil Salt.
Mumbai Indians: Hardik Pandya (c), Rohit Sharma, Suryakumar Yadav, Dewald Brevis, Jasprit Bumrah, Piyush Chawla, Gerald Coetzee, Tim David, Shreyas Gopal, Ishan Kishan (wk), Anshul Kamboj, Kumar Kartikeya, Akash Madhwal, Kwena Maphaka, Mohammad Nabi, Shams Mulani, Naman Dhir, Shivalik Sharma, Romario Shepherd, Arjun Tendulkar, Nuwan Thushara, Tilak Varma, Harvik Desai (wk), Nehal Wadhera and Luke Wood.
Match starts: 7.30 p.m. on May 11, 2024
